How AI and New Ad Models Are Transforming the Insights Industry

Check out the full episode below! Enjoy The Exchange? Don't forget to tune in live Friday at 12 pm EST on the Greenbook LinkedIn and Youtube Channel!

 

Industry heavyweights are flocking to IIEX North America as research and advertising undergo a major transformation. We'll dive into why Roblox is paying players to watch ads, how AI is becoming the ultimate research partner, and what Amazon's potential TikTok acquisition means for the future of shopping.

Plus, learn why today's insights professionals are trading spreadsheets for strategy as AI reshapes everything from qualitative research to data analysis. Don't miss these billion-dollar shifts happening right now in the insights world.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

Use code EXCHANGE30 to get a 30% discount on your general admission IIEX tickets!

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Transcript

Karen Lynch: Okay. Uh, yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Uh, we're live. Okay. It was such a busy week. We're like last minute, like, Oh wait, we forgot to add something.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Let's. Oh, okay. I'm just going to, uh, there she's added to her.

Lenny Murphy: Uh, boy, we are. Uh, less than three weeks out really to, from, uh, IIEX North America. So Karley, if you want to pop that up. Um, it's not too late. It is, boy, it is going to be the event of the season. So, uh, so please register, use the code I X 30 or exchange 30, uh, to get 30% off the registration, uh, be there or be square. I'm telling you. Yes. Thank you very much for that.

Karen Lynch: I mean, it is going to be such an exciting event. Everybody I talked to is really jazzed about the talks, you know, by now we've got most of the session titles and descriptions in and they're fantastic. I'm going to start to be able to look at people's presentation decks, you know, shortly, but the content so far looks really great. So of course I'm excited about that, but yeah.

Lenny Murphy: I'm hearing so much buzz. Everybody I've talked to, uh, I was actually on a call with, uh, uh, someone last week, uh, who was about all of the brands that they were talking to like, we'll just meet you at IAX.

Karen Lynch: So let me, let me tell you, I mean, like hands up to all of the partners that are speaking. Because many of them, whether they came in through calls for speakers or whether they have sponsorship deals with us, they have gotten the memo that people really appreciate when they bring their brand partners onto the stage. So there are brands everywhere on this agenda, not just speaking solo, but speaking with their partners. And the partnership to me would be one of the big themes this year. It's just, there's so much great happening and brands are willing to talk about it, which is anyway, all good stuff.

Lenny Murphy: Well and and this particular was you know a large CPG brand just they're just sending their whole team basically seems like the so lots of good stuff happening and of course we also have the the wire workshop and happy hour Karen yeah exactly so you know this I know it's it's always a highlight for me personally always has been when I was just coming to IAX as an individual but the wire happy hour the night before the event, which is always a sellout thing.

Karen Lynch: So Karley will share the link to the WIRE landing page for special events. But it's just a great way to kind of feel that fellowship of people that are supporting women in research in particular. So we're so happy, once again, that this is coming to our scene and in our area. But also this year, Kristen Luck is going to be presenting a workshop. While we're all setting up in the exhibit hall for North America, we have a room set aside for WIRES use, and Kristen will be presenting a workshop on Volatility as Opportunity, Strategic Leadership for Uncertain Times. So if there was ever a great time for that workshop, the day, the day before a lot of learning, hats off to Kristen for pulling this together. So excited for it. That one, I'm sure will sell out as well, so.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, yeah. Now, and I think this week is a really good example of why, because, good Lord, there's so much happening.

Karen Lynch: So there is a lot happening and, and, you know, connecting it to, um, to some of the talks, there are some national organizations that are coming. We're going to have a speaker from the American medical association. We're going to have somebody from, uh, the national retail Federation. So we have some national organizations coming together and they will be talking about some of the disruption that they're experiencing. So it's going to be a very interesting time, uh, to, to kind of get the pulse of some of the organizations that are actively in our ecosystem. And of course, Insights Association has a spot and SMR has a spot. So we're bringing those associations to the stage. Insights Career Network has a panel. They'll also have a room where people can meet and they will be facilitating some opportunities to chat if you are a networker. I mean, there's just so much going on in North America this year.

Lenny Murphy: It's going to be epic. I'm psyched. And the competition.

Karen Lynch: And the competition. I know. I'm so excited. Have a planning call a little bit. Later today with our friends from Aqwest. So I'm just very excited to have that conversation again as well. I know we talked about that last week, but if you weren't listening last week, Aqwest has gotten on board as a sponsor. They are the reason why, you know, we're going to be able to make that, you know, $10,000 check happen for one of our, for not one of our winners, for one of our finalists, so.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, yeah. At some point we'll find a way to share it, but I just did an analysis of historically the entire history of the competition and the outcomes of those companies, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, damn, it's impressive. And I don't know if that's taking credit for that, but solely it is reflective of how dynamic the ecosystem is and how supporting startups has really created tremendous impact across the industry. And for investors, I mean, billions, literally billions of dollars. Value creation over the years through the companies that have come through that ecosystem. So it's pretty cool.

Karen Lynch: Some of which we'll talk about later today.

Lenny Murphy: So let's get into it.

Karen Lynch: So let's get into it. But let's start. Let's start with Oh, start with this article that you found that I hadn't. The first one just let's just go there because you mentioned it. And even if it's not your launch, I haven't even had a chance to look at the link.

Lenny Murphy: They're doing well. Okay, so the new behavioral data firm at Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly. Basically kind of the brain trust from the old NPD group, John Bremmer, Bill Engel, Bill Levick, Kathy Love, Darren Pearson, John Rose, Karen Schoenbart, Chris Wilson, and of course kind of funded by Todd Johnson. What's interesting is that they are combining, I believe what they're combining is survey data from civic science, because Todd is on the board of civic science, combined with behavioral data and producing a new measurement solution. Yes, they are integrating large-scale consumer survey data from civic science with extensive behavioral and purchasing data, which of course is what NPD did a lot of. They have derived hundreds of millions of responses across hundreds of premium digital publishers, and they will be producing a new set of analytics with AI to understand real business outcomes. So anyway, hats off. These folks have been in the industry forever, and they certainly know what the heck they're doing. I mean, folks, these are heavy hitter researchers that have built really successful businesses in the past. And combining those solutions for this new synthesized, using AI to synthesize multiple data points to produce new business outcomes. There's that. We also have a lot of other news. So we're gonna go through really quickly. Yeah, and let's just give people a framework, you know, so they can follow along with us.

Karen Lynch: So, you know, that's sort of like, you know, a new firm, right? New firm launch. The next few that we're gonna talk about are partnerships or, you know, acquisitions. And then we'll get into some product. There were a ton of new product feature launches from established companies. So we'll kind of start with big pictures about companies doing what companies are doing, and then we'll get into how companies are evolving and innovating. So I think that's just that framework.

Lenny Murphy: So yeah, our good friends at Ipsos, right? Buying, our good friends at BVA, the BVA family. So BVA primarily, not only, but they do have a behavioral framework to do a lot of package testing. So large in Europe. What was interesting is I also saw Ipsos doing a webinar this week on synthetic samples for pack testing. So it's interesting that we see Ipsos kind of doubling down on the kind of traditional pack testing providers. Solutions through BVA while also lean into, uh, into the future as well. Uh, I absolutely have no, no, uh, insight into this particularly from, from kind of not, you know, talking to anybody, but I suspect that what we're seeing is Ipsos continuing to kind of, you know, make bets on the future, consolidating traditional businesses and bringing them in and transform them through their overall, uh, bets on, on future solutions. So interesting.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and if they're tapping into the behavioral expertise of BVA, which wasn't it BVA Nudge? Or is it the BVA Nudge Division? Yes.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, it was the Nudge Division. Yep. Yes.

Karen Lynch: So every time they've spoken at one of our events, they bring really strong thought leadership to the stage in this space. So I think it's great that Ipsos is kind of building on their solid expertise in this space. Yep. With these talks. So let's hope that acquisition fully goes through, and we'll see great things from them. But another acquisition, WPP has bought InfoSum. I don't know InfoSum. We've talked about WPP before, but it's in support of AI-driven marketing innovation with Group M. So there's a lot happening in that one statement right there. There's a lot going on there.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Well, InfoSum was probably an oversimplification, but a data aggregation and synthesis platform for multiple data sources tied to like DSPs and those types of things around advertising. So WPP obviously is, which they've been doing for years to an extent. So now they're doing it more. Very interesting that they acquired InfoSum as they are divesting of Kantar. I would say the difference there is InfoSum is a pure data solutions company, where Kantor is more focused on data collection. So I think that's just indicative of where advertising is, where their heads are, is data-driven personalized advertising. A platform like InfoSum can help deliver on that. The iSpot, Cercana, and Paramount. Comes at scale for always on sales measurement, another deal, um, you know, I spot TV, uh, which, you know, obviously is, does a whole lot of work around media measurement, uh, Sarkata, which is, you know, purchase data fundamentally, right. The, the old, uh, IRI group, uh, and paramount, you know, a large media platform, uh, combining those things to try and get attribution as they said to outcomes at scale they are trying to get to you you were exposed to this and you made this purchase uh here's where the ad was was exposed on you know the the paramount system uh platform yeah really just really tying that to to attribution well and and I want to connect it to this next story that caught my eye also because I think there's a bigger picture and I haven't, you know, I wanna pull these threads together with you.

Karen Lynch: So all of this is pointing us towards a new model for advertising in general or new ways of advertising and new ways to measure advertising effectiveness. And the innovation in this space is gonna be really interesting to watch. Now we've already kind of transitioned to some of this space, but Roblox announced this past week that they're introducing rewarded ads to pay players. Now, it's not like you earn cash playing Solitaire. It's not that, right? Which is all the buzz right now, the meme. But there are in-game rewards for watching the ads. So suddenly we're empowering the ad viewers to be like, I'm watching this and I'll get some, maybe I'll get something, you know, a new, you know, a new feature in my, you know, in my- Whatever that currency is. Whatever that currency, you know, I keep thinking of like, you know, if I was playing Fortnite, I might get a new skin or if I'm playing like Rocket League, I might get a new car or if I'm in whatever, if I'm in Minecraft, I might get new tools. I don't know Roblox very well personally. But the idea that I'm getting a reward for watching the ads, isn't it interesting that we're going to move to a place where we're actually going to compensate people for doing the work we need them to do? And isn't there something about this that makes you think like, of course people should be rewarded for their time if they're engaging with an ad, just like they should be rewarded if they're engaging their time for a survey. It is putting value on individuals who we've collected data from somewhat passively, and yet they are valuable to us. So I think, anyway, that's where my head was going with all of this. I don't know about you.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, no, I think that that's exactly it. It's moving them away from being the product to being partners. Which is certainly a topic near and dear to my heart. And there'll be, I suspect, they didn't call this out, but I would be shocked if there was not an assessment component for some subpopulation. What did you think of that, Ed?

Karen Lynch: Yes, yes, there has to be some of that, right?

Lenny Murphy: Yes, and the data to drive personalization. I mean, it's creating a virtuous cycle ecosystem for the board so they can deliver better ads to the players within, and Roblox is huge, also a public company. I'm sure this is a monetization engine for the company as well as for their players.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah, because they're talking about these immersive ads, the billboards you might find as you're navigating through the virtual environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do get all of that, but yeah, the ability for these virtual spaces to not just deliver ads, but then, yes, get some feedback on ads and yes, actually make people feel that their opinions are valuable and they're even just their presence engaging with an ad is valuable. I just feel like it seems like such a respectful thing to do opportunistically in these new and immersive ad environments. I just think it's cool and good progress.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, it's far better than, you know, displaying ads in free games or social platforms. Yeah. What's just a traditional advertising model? Yeah. But it can be such a better experience overall. So hats off to Roblox or Roblox, or I'm not sure how to pronounce it either. But I always think of that as kind of like, you know, Minecraft for adults. But oh, speaking of which, it's a big Minecraft weekend.

Karen Lynch: So shout out to everybody who's and go see the Minecraft movie this weekend. I know two of my three children are getting together to not only go to McDonald's to get the Minecraft Happy Meal. These are adults. These are adults. Mind you, they are all adult children going to get the Minecraft Happy Meal before they go see the Minecraft movie together, because it's a big deal. So I don't know where I'll be going, but how soft everybody is.

Lenny Murphy: Are you going? Not a firm plan yet, but the kids certainly are, especially my son, who's big Minecraft is bugging me. You know, dad, we need to go see that. So I'm sure we're going to wind up there at some point. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Karen Lynch: All right. Let's get back to back into how so many of our partners are doing some amazing things. And speaking of people in the competition, you know, I think so. Remesh entered the competition at one point, right? Do I have that right? Remesh was the winner of the competition. They were winners of the competition. So. Absolutely.

Karen Lynch: So here they go. Again, Remesh introduced Remesh video for enhanced qualitative research. So may not be new to the industry, but it's new for them.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. And full disclosure, I'm an advisor to Remesh. So, yeah, this Remesh is always, they were the first AI, they used AI to do text based quality scale. Yeah. Now they're introduced to video. And that's just, it's important. And so hats off to them to continue 10 years in, to continue to innovate and do those things. So.

Karen Lynch: Real quick, for those of you listening who, you know, might've heard the innovation story of Swiffer. I was just talking with somebody about this yesterday over coffee. I don't know, you know, the Swiffer story where it's like they were watching hours and hours of ethnographies and then it just took one moment where somebody saw, you know, a woman take a wet paper towel and wipe off like the final bit of dust off the floor. And that's supposedly the moment that triggered the idea. Now imagine if you have all, and it took hours of watching videos. Now imagine how much quicker that innovation could have come to light had the AI, if you upload all this video to AI and the AI says, here's, here's an interesting behavior that's outside of the patterns I've seen. I just think that's really where the power of video and AI are going to come, is the video picking up on things. If innovation is your desired outcome, which it always was in the work that I did, but...

Lenny Murphy: And for P&G, yeah, I mean, that was a... I remember, gosh, 15 years ago, P&G, they had invested in a company called 24True, and they were basically putting all of the video across everything they ever did in one place. The problem was unlocking the analytics scale. So and yes, to your point, we have that now. Yeah. So companies like E&G or any CPG company that really values ethnographic walking in the, you know, in qualitative solutions. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Massive.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Massive.

Karen Lynch: So anyway, hats off to them. So, you know, speaking of companies that are leaning into a call space. Recollective, which by the way, you've also, you know, I am also an advisor at Recollective.

Lenny Murphy: It's purely coincidental.

Karen Lynch: Recollective adding automatic translations to enhance global research. So what's cool about this, even Tim last night got off a phone call where they, you know, they have translation, AI translation now in some video calls that they're doing. You internally. So his boss who speaks French, you know, can speak in his language and Tim can hear it in English and it's pretty cool. So this technology, and I have earbuds that, you know, I can put them in and as long as I'm, you know, working on the app, it'll do the same thing. Like somebody might be speaking a different language and I'm hearing it in another. So this is such a great unlock for our world, let alone for this platform. Anybody who's doing international research, anybody who, you know, needs to have conversations with people, you know, or interviews with people who might not speak your language. There's a great unlock happening here, and I think it's awesome.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, I totally agree. And to automate that, I mean, gosh, the Rockhopper days, our claim to fame was international online B2B research. And we did that really well. It was also really expensive, primarily because of translations, right? I mean, it was just such a challenge. To do that automatically at scale on these platforms. Yes, just a huge efficiency and cost savings to do that. So yes, hats off to them. Also with AI, our friends at OvationMR.

Karen Lynch: Also with Qual, right? So yeah, OvationMR introduced an AI Moderator for Qual in Ethos. Ethos is the name of the- They bought it from CMAX Solari.

Lenny Murphy: Platform. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: What's interesting about this one is, you know, AI driven moderation. Yup. We've had like qualitative chat bots. We've had this concept but what they talk about that's interesting is the first time someone's really talking about it is um training the AI to moderate. Moderator training. So, it's more than just asking questions or probing. It's actually some moderator training on how to, cuz what a moderator has always offered is the ability to say, that's something I want to probe on. The discernment in the moment of this is something that I want to probe on. And so what I'm intrigued by and don't know enough about but would like to know more about is, OK, what type of moderator training is happening with this AI? Is it everything? It's not just asking open-ended questions, right? If it's how to identify what path to go, that's different. That's a type of critical thinking that I didn't know we were ready for. So I really want to see moderator training going into this platform.

Lenny Murphy: It's kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, we're probably not far from, you know, building your own individual persona. I mean, I talked about this, I would build that for a kind of writing, um, AI that writes in my voice and, and does a pretty good job. It's kind of the same thing a step further. So. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Interesting and check it out because that's pretty cool.

Lenny Murphy: These next three, I think that the throughput here and why I found them is that they're companies that are playing a more expansive role in the tech stack within an organization. They're combining insights with connections to customer experience or user experience or even marketing. Optimization and delivery and operations. So that's something we need to pay attention to, right?

Karen Lynch: Yeah, rattle through what these three are, because I don't know if you can enter a brief.

Lenny Murphy: Full Story launches AI agent-powered tools for digital experience optimization. So it's from behavioral data, focused more on CX and EX, but that's a company that kind of sits outside of the traditional research space, but yet is powering you know, really qualitative research capabilities embedded across an enterprise in a different way than just kind of the more siloed research approach. So that was one. Yeah, there's reviews, and reviews have been around for quite some time. Actually, they were in the competition at one point, their AI driven action hub for unified consumer intelligence. And they're more focused on voice consumer data, but they're driving it directly into marketing, sales and operations. So, you know, they're, they're taking this component, and their main focus is on customer reviews, kind of vindicated through both kinds of direct and social feeds. But driving that into the organization, where it can be most useful instead of being kind of stuck in a PowerPoint slide, you know. And then Sourcetable, interesting, AI-enhanced spreadsheet for democratized data analysis. They raised $4.3 million in funding, and it's a whole new way to make data analysis accessible to everybody. So just very interesting seeing this diffusion of insights throughout the enterprise in these companies are powering that. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: And the, and the full story launch, um, you know, for those of you who are still curious about how AI agents are playing out, um, check out that article because that'll allow your head to start to wrangle what that, what that looks like, Right. Because we're, we're taking that, you know, customer experience or employee experience information, and we are making things happen, um, based on some of the behavioral data that we have. So it, it really, uh, Anyway, so that's one of those threads that you and I have talked about before is the agent, the action items that an agent and an agent AI is allowing to happen. And that'll come up. I had the privilege of interviewing Ellie Enriquez from Qualtrics yesterday for our podcast. And we talked a bit about agents. And then I had another fabulous individual that I was speaking to about AI agents and how more and more we're going to start to see use cases for these and how they're actually taking place in organizations.

Lenny Murphy: It's pretty cool. I was helping a client with a press release yesterday. I won't spoil it, but on their incorporation of agents into their platform to, to do, to do things. So, all right.

Karen Lynch: So, so if you're still a little in the dark about some of this stuff, I do think that we'll just hit, you know, last 5 minutes, just two of these tech developments, in particular with learning about AI and OpenAI launched the OpenAI Academy this week for kind of your AI education. So it's an education platform that's open source, go in, learn. So it's a great move as things are getting really competitive with OpenAI and Claude and the other aggregates and Copilot and all of these LLM generative AI platforms. That is trying to become your new best friend or your best coworker, they have now launched their education platform. So it is a smart move to educate your users or educate your, you know, slow to adopt or potential new users, but check it out because there's some great stuff. And we are officially at that place where it's like, you know, if you don't have these skills, you're behind already, right? You're behind. If you're lagging and chances are our audience is not because of the very nature that they're here, but if you are, get yourself some education, start to pay attention to all of the things so that you can immerse yourself in the knowledge.

Lenny Murphy: So. Yeah. Well, we have some data on that at the very end. So, um, yeah, yeah. Cool. Cool. Some of the, uh, Amazon, uh, the Amazon's AI can now purchase products from other sites.

Karen Lynch: That's, that's an agentic application application. And I think that's an important one because. It shows you a new, kind of a new behavior in the future, right? That is very relatable to anybody who shops on Amazon. So if you haven't been able to wrangle AI agents in the workplace, like check it out for you on a personal level, like, oh, wait a minute, this is interesting.

Lenny Murphy: Well, and what's, so I didn't make it in the news, but you know, this weekend, the whole TikTok thing, Amazon entered a bid. To be, to acquire TikTok US. And that was to look it up, right? We don't need to post the link, but because the article I read was interesting, you've talked about this, TikTok is also a shopping platform, right? Increasingly. So what happens when that's, when Amazon owns TikTok and now they're enabling purchasing outside of Amazon, right?

Karen Lynch: Well, well, what happens might be that they do really well. So here we have this article about Amazon surpassing Walmart in revenue. And it's like, Oh, okay. Like I see what's happening here. Um, 80% of Americans would consider shopping on Amazon, reinforcing its marketing dominance, which is, you know, the kind of AI generated summary for the story that we had found. But, um, it used to be kind of like Walmart here in the U.S. Walmart kind of owned retail dominance, right? Like, you know, it's, it's a big deal. Ooh, that's a very long link. Sorry, Karley. But the, but the reality that, you know, Amazon is going to surpass Walmart is, and especially because, you know, now we're so tapped into Walmart Data Ventures as sort of our partners, it's like, oh, interesting, but Amazon Web Services kicking some ass.

Lenny Murphy: Just for a minute, before we get to this last piece, because it is worth, that's worth just kind of digging into because there are a couple things. So there's that piece of Amazon buying TikTok, that's, you know, there, but it also goes right back to what our conversation about Roblox, the data to do personalized marketing and attribution, that's been a theme running through all of this, they would own that ecosystem. Now, Walmart, we know they own Walmart Data Ventures, and, and Scintilla, and, you know, they are increasingly leaning into leveraging data to personalized results. So would we see Walmart buy, I don't know, Instagram? I mean, maybe, right? Or to launch something of their own that way. And you roll into all of that, Amazon is also a huge investor in Claude, I believe. So they're building, you know, that AI, they have this training set, you know, we saw the whole XAI and X merger for the X data is a training set, would we see a Walmart do something to get that training data as well to keep enhancing and building those agents? All of that is absolutely, we can see those things happen.

Karen Lynch: And I think what's important to call out and the reason why these things get on our radar and stay on our radar is because there's a big picture that some of these smart thinkers at both Walmart and Amazon are seeing which is changing buyer behaviors and changing consumer needs and that the benefit of connecting dots at that level also of what might we do to kind of shore up our future in this industry and stay relevant and not get obsolete and not get, anyway, there's a lot that these things are indicative of big picture strategy for these very large retailers. Hopefully it's inspiring to some not so large retailers out there as well.

Lenny Murphy: Right. And there will be companies to go back all the way through that fit into the tech stack to help enable. Right.

Karen Lynch: And so last one, we end with this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. They released, they've been doing this two years now, their global study on AI and market research. That's all they focus on. So for instance, grit, we touch on some of these topics, but we don't go into the depth that the MRI does. Ray Poynter touched on some of these topics. Right. But this is just focused on that. And downloading the report, it's not that deep. As far as it's not that long. It's not great. So understood, understood. But the title of it is AI in focus 2025.

Karen Lynch: So it's basically a snapshot of where we are right now with our AI adoption in the industry. I haven't read it yet. Have you?

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, I haven't. Yeah, I have. It is that. So adoption is increasing, we're seeing that significant, still kind of tools focused, also increasing fear. So, the increase in adoption, then it seems like there's a corollary that the more you use these tools, the more you realize, oh, crap, right? What about me? And, but this flip side of that is also forcing people to rethink what is the value that we deliver instead of being task, you know, function oriented instead of being more. So if anything unlocks this thing, we've always thought it was going to happen. The technology would shift us into more strategic, uh, roles. It does appear that AI is the technology that has potential to do that. And it's certainly making people think along those lines. So, um, anyway, good, it's a good report. Download it. And it kind of ties all of this together thematically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: And I just had a conversation with the speaker who's going to join us in Europe in a plenary spot. And they will be talking about this, about basically, not being afraid, like recognizing who you are called to be as a new professional. Absolutely. No, and it's going to be one of those kind of inspiring plenary talks, which is just all about like, who are we called to be at this moment in time, which is, thank you, Karley. Unexpected plug for Europe. Can I show it? Can I show it? There I go, yeah. For our Europe event, which is on the horizon, but we are being summoned to rise to the challenge that we find ourselves in and it is time. We all rise.

Lenny Murphy: I have shared about my journey with all of this and I'll tell you this weekend I have a lot that I need to get done and I am looking forward to utilizing my AI friends to accomplish the logistical components of it.

Karen Lynch: But it's not just that. What I'm talking about is not just you and I.

Lenny Murphy: Right, but the strategy.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, this is somebody, you know, another podcast episode that'll launch with Kalindi Mehdi from Estée Lauder who who has now said 70% of her work as a global insights professional is now in the world of AI. And granted, it's Estee Lauder, spoiler alert, this podcast episode is one you don't want to miss because 70% of her job is now AI. She couldn't have predicted this. This is where she has to live as a lead insights professional. That's significant. So if you want to get to those higher levels in our field at this point, and you are on the brand side, you are a working executive on the corporate side of our ecosystem, shore up these skills, because it's everything.

Lenny Murphy: It's not just our individual use cases, it is your corporate use cases. And we just got to keep talking about all of that at all of our events, which we're doing.

Karen Lynch: Absolutely. And my point on that was, and we'll culminate on this, is that I was already a consultant. I was afraid of devaluing because of thinking about money, rights, hours, et cetera, et cetera, time. That's not value creation.

Lenny Murphy: The value creation is impactful. And the tools are just a way to help us deliver more impact. So I encourage everybody to think along those lines, right?  It's about delivering the impact. These tools just help us get there faster. And I fully embrace that. And I know that's what brands are doing as well.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, it's pretty cool. Because remember, what was it, not even a year ago, we were saying how brands were waiting. Brands are not waiting anymore. That's done. Brands are like, oh yeah, we're on board now. So pretty cool.

Lenny Murphy: All right, well, we did it. We crammed in almost twice the amount of content we usually do.

Karen Lynch: So have a great weekend, everybody. Enjoy Minecraft if you're going to see it.

Lenny Murphy: Have fun with AI if you're playing, and we'll see you next time.

Karen Lynch: Thanks, everybody.

Lenny Murphy: Take care.

Links from the episode:

RSVP for the WIRe workshop and Happy Hour 

Stellar Line-Up for New Behavioral Data Firm Tenetic 

Ipsos Enters Exclusive Talks to Acquire The BVA Family 

WPP Acquires InfoSum to Bolster AI Marketing Solutions 

iSpot, Circana & Paramount Launch ‘Outcomes at Scale’ for Always-On Sales Measurement 

Roblox to Introduce Rewarded Ads That Pay Players 

Remesh Introduces Remesh Video for Enhanced Qual Research 

Recollective Adds Automatic Translations to Enhance Global Research 

OvationMR Introduces AI Moderator for Qualitative Research in EthOS 

Fullstory Launches AI Agent-Powered Tools for Digital Experience Optimization 

Revuze Debuts AI-Driven ActionHub for Unified Consumer Intelligence 

Sourcetable Launches AI-Enhanced Spreadsheet for Democratized Data Analysis 

OpenAI Launches OpenAI Academy for AI Education 

Amazon’s AI Can Now Purchase Products From Other Sites 

Amazon Surpasses Walmart in Revenue as Brand Strength Reaches 80% Favorability 

MRII Releases Global Study on AI in Market Research